kristiewaldroop

This is one of four Georgette Heyer books my mother bought me years and years ago. At the time I thought they seemed kind of dry and, as I was slowly gravitating away from reading mostly classical fiction, I put them in my bookcase where they've remained unread ever since, through fifteen years and four separate instances of moving house, until I finally picked The Reluctant Widow up last month. It's a pleasant read and not as dry as I'd feared — even managed to pull a few chuckles out of me — but really nothing to write home about. I found the plot to be a bit disappointing, because the premise is rather exciting but I feel like the potential was never explored; the book's 300 odd pages long, and there's really nothing to it. "It's a story about hunting for hidden papers in a large house", and doesn't that sound dull? Well, in reality it's even less interesting. I know it's unfair to compare Heyer to Austen, but I'm going to do it anyway, because if Austen can use even less pages to create entire worlds, then Heyer should have been able to come up with something more entertaining and far more substantial than what she did. That's not saying that it's a bad book. It's just... lackluster. If this is any indication, the three remaining Heyer books in my personal library will have to wait a little bit longer — let's aim for 2019, shall we?

2022-10-21 05:25